Get That Life: How I Became the President of a Tequila Company

Jenna Fagnan didn't really consider herself an entrepreneur, but when she had the chance to run a new liquor brand, she couldn't pass it up.

Jenna Fagnan grew up in an Eskimo village in Alaska, went to Harvard Business School, and left a lucrative career in brand management at LVMH to help launch Tequila Avión in 2010. Later that year, the brand was featured in a storyline on the HBO show, Entourage, and in 2012, it was voted the world's best-tasting tequila at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Fagnan shares how she combated gender discrimination, learned from rejection, and listened to the advice of everyone around her to become one of the only female presidents in the spirits business.

When I think about what career direction I wanted to take when I was younger, I don't think I knew. I definitely didn't follow a linear path.

I was born in an Eskimo village outside of Anchorage, Alaska, and spent most of my childhood years in a small fishing and logging town on the Oregon coast. For me, growing up in a way that's not the quintessential path — where everything is planned out for you — is a great way to learn and be exposed to different types of people. It piqued my curiosity about the world.

I went to Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, to study international business, Japanese, and chemistry, which is sort of an odd mix. I had a chemistry scholarship to go to school, but I quickly realized that wasn't right for me. There was a point when I was going to drop out of school because it was too hard, and I thought I wasn't smart enough to be there. But I had an awesome professor who encouraged me to stick with it. I decided to focus on international business and Japanese and keep chemistry as a minor. There was a masochistic side of me that wouldn't allow me to completely give up on chemistry.

Katia Temkin

During summers, I would work in restaurants either waitressing or bartending in Texas or back home. I also worked for IMG and their world tennis team during my sophomore and junior years. They were putting on tennis exhibitions in San Antonio. There was one guy running the show. He called our business school and said, "Hey, we need an intern." I volunteered right away and I loved it. It was maybe my first entrepreneurial stint because it was just him and me working on it. I remember going to Office Max and offering free tickets to the match in exchange for printing services. It was my first experience learning how to negotiate too.

When I graduated in 1995 with a degree in international business, with minors in Japanese and chemistry, I was trying to figure out what to do. All my friends were going to grad school, or going into accounting and finance jobs. I wanted to see the world and do something different.

At the time Japan was a country that had a lot going on from a business prospective, I heard the Japanese consulate was hiring people for an exchange program to work on sister city programs, such as teaching English and working with the government. I applied and got a job teaching in middle schools and high schools.

It was an eye-opening experience for a young, cocky Westerner. The only other woman in the office was the woman who served us tea. My first day on the job, my boss took one look at me and said, "We asked for a boy. You can go home." I was lucky to have the bravado of a young person at the time. I was adamant that I was going to stay and that I would earn his respect.

It was hard. I had to learn to listen, which I think at the time wasn't a great skill set of mine. Any time I would give my opinion, it was met with men saying, "Maybe impossible," which is the Japanese way to say, "No." A very senior gentleman saw that I was struggling, and he took pity on me. He took me aside and said, "You need to understand where everyone sits." He taught me how to get the men to think my idea was their idea and to listen.

After two years, I decided it was time to come back to the U.S. I got a job trading soybean commodities for a Japanese company in Portland, where my parents were living. Once again, I show up to work and it's all men. I had to get there at the crack of dawn to work Asian hours. It was so not what I should have been doing. It was not something I was good at.

Katia Temkin

I started temping on the side and got a job doing some translations for Nike [which is based in Portland]. Wieden+Kennedy, which is the marketing group that works with Nike, offered me a job as an assistant. I left my job as a trader after just four months and became the lowest entry-level employee at Wieden+Kennedy.

My title was account coordinator. I would deal with people's schedules and other administrative assistant work. I had a phenomenal mentor in Rebecca Van Dyck, who was the account director of Nike Global. One day she said to me, "Listen, the whole team is out, but we have this really important TV shoot in L.A. You have to go down and be the account person." I looked at her and said, "Are you crazy? I don't know what I'm doing." She said, "It doesn't matter. You are going to learn a lot. Just be honest. When you don't know something, just tell people the truth."

It was probably one of the scariest things I've ever done. She had more faith in me than I had in myself. It's a great management skill that I remember today. I went to the shoot and tried to help as much as I could, listen, and learn. I made sure the athletes had anything they wanted. And I helped make sure everyone was communicating with each other. One of the partners came back and said I was a fantastic supervisor for the shoot. In reality, I was about three levels below supervisor. I then got promoted to assistant account executive and eventually account director.

Going from working with all men who didn't want me there to having this great female mentor felt really freeing. It's rare to have someone who is a boss and a mentor, who is incredibly sharp and knows how to manage people. I worked my butt off for her. I hope that every young woman gets the opportunity to have a powerful female boss because it allows you to see yourself a few steps ahead.

I stayed with Wieden+Kennedy for about 2.5 years. I absolutely loved what I was doing, but I felt there was more I could learn. When we were sitting there trying to solve problems for the Nike business, I thought, There are other levers I could be using. So I decided to go to business school.

Katia Temkin

I got in to Harvard Business School, and I was thrilled. When I got there, I also realized that I was pretty different than my peers, most of whom were from finance and consulting backgrounds. Here I was coming from a creative, soft-skills background in marketing. It was intimidating.

I contacted alumni to find a summer internship with DoubleClick, a company that did Internet advertising. I worked with the mergers and acquisitions team on new technology they were looking to invest in or acquire. Again, it was something I didn't know anything about, but it sounded glamorous.

During my last year at Harvard, LVMH came to campus to conduct interviews for their future management program. I was introduced to the different general managers who ran each group within the company. A few months before graduation, I was offered a full-time job to be a brand manager for Dom Perignon [which is owned by LVMH]. At the time, the champagne business was really suffering, and the brand itself was quiet. I was tasked with the challenge to make it grow. I learned to hire people who were smarter than me, and I reached out to everyone who I thought might have some insight — former colleagues from Wieden+Kennedy, former professors, and colleagues who I respected. I said, "Here's my business challenge. What would you do if you were me?" I realized I can only see so much on my own.

The job taught me a lot about sales, which I knew nothing about. I also learned that this is an industry where there are not enough women. Oftentimes I'd be the only female at a big meeting.

I was promoted to become the general manager of the Dom Perignon business and was then put in charge of the entire Champagne portfolio strategy for the group. I was there for four years when LVMH asked me to run sales and marketing for Tag Heuer watches, which they also own. They like to move people around to give them different exposure to the whole business. I was the head of sales there for three years. I was on the road four to five days a week, which is how I met my now business partner, Ken Austin. He was one of the presidents and founders of Marquis Jet. He was just beginning his quest to make a new tequila in Mexico. We met for lunch, and I was just blown away by his mind. I knew I could learn a lot from him, so we kept in touch.

Katia Temkin

About three years later, Ken called and said, "I have the final recipe. Get to my office and taste it." When I got there, he said to me, "Listen, I need someone to run this company. What do you think?" There was something in my gut that said, This is what I really should be doing. I knew that very rarely in life do you come across the beginning of a great lifestyle brand. I had worked with great brands in the past, but they had all existed long before me. I was scared, because I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur. But I decided to leave my job at LVMH in 2010 after eight years to help launch Tequila Avión.

I went from having two assistants to it just being me. I had no idea how to send a FedEx or how to get the garbage taken out. All these basic things you take for granted. I had all the responsibility too. If I messed this up, it's all on me.

In the beginning, we were essentially selling it door-to-door to restaurants and liquor stores. We had billboards and print advertising, and we were growing. Then, one day, Ken was sitting in a hot tub powwowing with his friend Doug Ellin, the creator of Entourage. Doug was saying he needed a new storyline for Turtle, and Ken says, "What about my tequila?" Doug loved the idea, and it was completely free promotion for Tequila Avión. We thought it would be huge for us.

When [the storyline] debuted on the show, overnight our distributors in New York and California were asking for more. But because we were only in [those states] at the time, a lot of consumers didn't think it was a real tequila brand. That was surprising for us. We had a marketing challenge no one has ever had before: too much awareness about the brand before we could meet the demand for distribution. And once we did start to distribute to other states, the perception was that we made up Avión because of the show. It was hard to take after working so hard on something. But when we won the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2012 — which for our industry is like the Oscars — that changed the course for the brand. We had legitimacy. And we had this fun pop-culture connection as well.

We now have 20 employees in our headquarters in New York, plus an office in Florida and our factory in Jesus Maria, Mexico, where we make the tequila. We have five Avión products, which are now distributed around the world via our partners, Pernod Ricard.

My day-to-day consists of checking in with all of our teams. I'll Skype with our team in Mexico, asking what's going in with production and supply, how the trucks are moving, do we have enough corks? I'll spend time with our marketing teams, analyze our social media strategy, and spend time talking to Ken to get his insight on marketing strategies and discuss ideas for the next products.

I love what I do, and I can't imagine doing anything else. Avión has only been in business for five years, so I feel like there's so much more to do. I somehow found my niche in the world.

Get That Life is a weekly series that reveals how successful, talented, creative women got to where they are now. Check back each Monday for the latest interview.

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